Armed police raid home after mistaking Lara Croft dummy for gunman

[Xaccers]

Originally Posted by gazzae

I don't blame the police for their initial action. What I don't understand is why after it was discovered to be a mannequin he was still arrested and held for 13 hours.

Either it's punishment because the police felt stupid, which they shouldn't really, they were responding to what they percieved as a threat with the information they had at hand, or, they found something in the house related to other firearms charges.

[Derek S]

Originally Posted by gazzae

I don't blame the police for their initial action. What I don't understand is why after it was discovered to be a mannequin he was still arrested and held for 13 hours.

Originally Posted by Derek S

I'd imagine the full story isn't out there (as is usual for these kind of stories)

Just think back to the poor woman attacked by the big nasty policeman who punched her several times in the face.
Then remember she was a vicious harpie with self diagnosed illnesses out her mind on drink and wasn't punched in the face at all.

9 times out of 10 stories like this get into the media without the background or full facts being discovered and then get quietly ignored when it turns out to be not as exciting as they first thought.

[AntiSilence]

Originally Posted by Russ B

Perhaps they couldn't quite see it was a doll? I remember when TR1 came out and my local Odeon had one of these lifesized figures of Croft pointing a gun. If all you could see was an outline through curtain nets or in the dark, I can see how the mistake could be made especially as the cops don't take chances.

I think they acted correctly in their response to what they thought was an armed person. Well done to them for that. What I think they've missed the mark on is arresting him for firearms offences once it was known that it was a Lara Croft doll.

---------- Post added at 17:40 ---------- Previous post was at 17:34 ----------

Originally Posted by TheDaddy

Years ago a malicious neighbour told the police she had seen a gun in my house, it was actually a air pistol and a blatantly obvious air pistol at that, armed police had snipers on rooftops, kicked my door in and rushed in shouting waving guns etc, after they had seen the pistol they were very apologetic and arranged for a carpenter to come and fix my door, my gripe is with the women that called them, see knew full well it wasn't real and her actions could have had tragic consequences, I can only hope karma catches up with her in the end

I know that experience TD! I had the police chopper and 6 armed response cars to my house 2 years ago because someone had phoned the police when me and a mate fired a legal blank fire gun.

Obviously, they didn't know if it was a real gun or not so had to come out. They closed my street off and had armed officers outside. One came up to my door (armed with what looked to be a H&K assault rifle) and knocked. I answered it, he asked me if I knew about the gun shots. I said yes, we'd got a blank firer here. They came in, checked it all out, saw that it wasn't a real firing one (ie that it hadn't been modded) and they were all right about it all.

One of them even let us look at the rounds in the H&K mag When they left they said thanks for my help.

Needed a beer or two after that, I can tell you!

But, they didn't drag us away on firearms charges. They were reasonable (it was the Nottingham armed response team).

[Xaccers]

Some friends of mine at uni just after I left were driving from Hatfield to St Albans to pick up another mate.
One of them found a cap gun in the back of the car and picked it up to look at it.
Unfortunately, a little old lady saw this and rightfully reported it to the police.
On their way back to uni the driver noticed they were being followed by a panda car, and when they got out at the car park, the police shouted for them to stay in the car, a ARU screamed up, dragged everyone out and had them face down on the floor with MP5's 2 inches from their heads.
Definitely a brown trouser moment.
They were kept in the cells over night and warned about the dangers of waving anything gun shaped around in public, then allowed to leave.
Frankly I, and they, think they were very lucky, anything could have gone wrong and they could have ended up dead.

AntiSilence, just noticed you mentioned Nottingham police, who normally are well aware of gun laws, unfortunately once incident I know about, the police who turned up didn't have a clue.
A 19 year old in a council house had his disabled step dad (nasty bit of work) living with him. The step dad was against the 19 year old having airsoft guns, and even though it was the 19 year old's house, brought a burley bloke around to forcibly remove them. The 19 year old called the police, who asked the burley bloke to leave, and as soon as the word "guns" was said by his step dad, the 19 year old was arrested and the airsoft guns were confiscated.
Took him months to get them back, despite the police admitting they'd made a mistake, and when they were returned, several were broken

[AntiSilence]

Yeah, waving something that looks like a gun around in public is a bad idea. At least with us and the blank firer, we were at my house.

[greencreeper]

Gun toting nutters with a blood lust and a license to kill, but middle England loves them

[BBKing]

The bit I don't understand is why after realising it was a dummy, did they arrest it's owner, held him for 13 hours, then released him on bail for suspected firearms offences, so he's been charged with something.

Quite. It's not the first time, either. I suspect a lot has changed since the SOCP Act 2003, which made every offence arrestable, plus the blatant attempt to get everyone on the DNA database (33% of which is now from completely innocent people), plus the targets problem that even the Police Federation, the worlds most right-wing trade union, thinks is a bit pointless. All of it adds up to the police becoming experts at, er, wasting police time. Perhaps we should ring up and report them for that.

As for the results of cases not being publicised as much as the original arrest, often it's because people are quietly released, rather than because they've been found guilty of anything. I detect an aversion to embarrassment - personally I'd (and I suspect I'm not alone) trust the police more if they occasionally held their hands up and said 'OK, we goofed up, but we were doing the right thing'. After all, no one here is complaining about the original raid, just the subsequent detention.